Russ Feingold Up, State Patrol Down

UP: Russ Feingold. The Wisconsin senator's sixth attempt to start a debate on withdrawing troops from Iraq finally succeeds. The U.S. Senate votes 70 to 24 to discuss Feingold's bill, which calls for bringing home soldiers from Iraq and cutting funding for further deployments. Republicans say they want to debate the bill so they can highlight the, uh, accomplishments of the Iraq war.

DOWN: State Patrol. A report by the Wisconsin National Guard faults the emergency response to a traffic backup on Interstate 39-90 near Madison that left nearly 2,000 people stranded overnight during a blizzard. The report says the State Patrol was slow to realize how serious the situation was and should have shut down the highway earlier.